“He threatened you?” That was it. Lillian wasn’t going to be party to bringing down violence on an innocent man like this. She was going to work this out on her own, whatever it took—
“No, Lillian.” Cal’s face was serious again. “He threatened you.”
That brought her up short. “...Oh.”
Cal moved closer. Lillian restrained herself from leaning into him. She could feel his body heat, though, and it was somehow reassuring.
“The police don’t like getting involved in shifter business,” he was saying. “The locals know we exist, of course—hard to live in this town and stay ignorant—but there’s no protocol for handling us and they’d rather stay away. So it’s more than likely that in a case like this, with no hard evidence of anything, they’d just do some cursory questioning, keep their noses out of it, and make everything worse.”
He looked her in the eye. “Which means that it’s up to us, the shifter community itself, to police behavior like this. Threatening an innocent woman because of a debt she didn’t incur? That’s unacceptable. I won’t allow it.”
Lillian had another flash to that imaginary Western, and Cal as the local sheriff, saying, Not in my town.
It should’ve been silly. But somehow, it wasn’t at all. That firm conviction, in that deep voice, standing so close to her and saying he wouldn’t allow her to be hurt...she had to work hard to control that breathlessness again.
“All right,” she agreed finally. “We’ll work together.”
Cal nodded. “Good. I want to keep the kids out of it as much as possible.”
Meaning Teri and her crowd. “I agree.” She wasn’t drawing anyone else into this mess, that was for sure.
She looked around. “That probably means I should get out of Teri’s house. Scratch that, that definitely means I should get out of Teri’s house. But...I can’t go home. I live with my parents.” Saying that brought a blush to her face, because she was well into her thirties and it was embarrassing. But—well, it was true.
And Cal just nodded. “Smart. Faster to pay down your debt that way.”
“Yes. And I’m well on my way,” she added, and then clamped down on that line of speech. What, did she want to dazzle this man by chirping, I’ve paid off forty thousand dollars of debt in the last two years with my good job and my thrifty ways! No.
But now Cal was shaking his head. “You impress me, you know?”
Lillian frowned. “I’ve just told you all of the ways my silly choices got me in trouble.”
He looked at her. “No. That’s not what you’ve told me. You’ve told me how being young and in love got you into a terrible situation, and how you’ve picked yourself up, taken on ownership of problems that rightly shouldn’t have been yours, and stepped on forward with your life. Can’t be easy, living at home. Especially—” He stopped.
Lillian frowned. “No, go on. Especially?” She had a suspicion of how that sentence ended.
Cal looked embarrassed. “Couldn’t help overhearing a thing or two about Teri’s situation, is all. Seems like she had it kind of difficult at home. Can’t imagine it’s any easier for you, and you’re sticking it out.”
Lillian was strangely tempted to open up, to give Cal a whole long litany of the problems with life with her mother. The way she put Lillian down. The way she didn’t listen to a thing Lillian said. The way she required all the attention to be on her all of the time. Et cetera, et cetera.
She put a firm hold on that. There was nothing less attractive than people who just complained about others all day, and she’d just spent a solid quarter-hour listing all of the bad qualities of her ex. She wasn’t going to top that by complaining about her mother. How embarrassing.
She decided on, “It’s been challenging. But I grew up the house, I know what to expect.”
“Doesn’t make it easier,” Cal murmured. “Sometimes that makes it harder.”
Lillian just shook her head, not wanting to get into it. Because she was afraid she might never stop. “No matter how challenging it is, I don’t want to bring any danger to my parents’ doorstep. But I don’t know where else I could stay. I suppose a hotel.” She was reluctant to commit to that because of the expense—due to her intense debt-payoff regimen, she never had very much spare cash.
“Not a hotel,” Cal said. “You should—” He stopped.
Lillian looked at him. He seemed almost surprised. At himself? At what he had been about to say? “I should what?”
“I was going to say, you should come stay with me,” Cal said, looking embarrassed. “I have a guest room. But I wouldn’t want to make you uncomfortable.” He seemed to notice suddenly how close they were standing, and took a quick step back, as though to demonstrate the principle.
Lillian raised her eyebrows. She knew she shouldn’t agree, because the idea of putting the man to all of this trouble seemed wrong. But she was caught by his assumption. “Uncomfortable? We’re both adults. I was married, so you can assume I’ve stayed in the same house as a man overnight before. I’m no innocent maiden who’s going to gasp at the thought of being unchaperoned with a single gentleman.”
He smiled a little. “Right. I should’ve known. Well, then, Lillian: come stay with me tonight. I can handle any mountain lions that appear, and your family will be out of any danger. Meanwhile, we’ll work on figuring out a way to make them back off for good. Sound like a plan?”
“Sounds like a plan,” Lillian agreed.